Fasting for farmworker overtime

Assemblywoman Lorena Gonzalez and other legislators joined faith leaders and members of the United Farm Workers on Tuesday to launch a 24-hour fast in support of a bill seeking standard overtime rules for farmworkers.

The action has historical roots in the struggle to improve the lot of those working California’s fields. The late labor leader Cesar Chavez attracted attention and support to the farmworkers’ cause with hunger strikes, marches, boycotts and other actions for more than three decades beginning in the 1960s.

The fast began publicly around 8 a.m. Tuesday on the north steps of the state Capitol in Sacramento, with the conclusion planned today for 8 a.m. at the Cathedral of Blessed Sacrament, also in Sacramento. Among those participating is Andres Chavez, great-grandson of Cesar Chavez.

Gonzalez, D-San Diego, is one of numerous Democratic joint authors of AB 1066. According to her office, the bill would phase in overtime standards for farmworkers, lowering the existing 10-hour day to the standard eight-hour workday. It would also establish a 40-hour workweek for farmworkers over a four-year period.

The phase-in would begin in 2019 with annual half-hour increments per day until reaching the eight-hour day and annual five-hour-per-week increments until 40 hours is reached. But completion would be expected in 2022.

According to Gonzalez’s office, the farmworker overtime bill received a boost in March in the form of a letter from Democratic presidential candidate and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, who said “it reflects our shared commitment to fair and humane working conditions for those whose labor feed our nation and much of the world.”

Cesar Chavez’s hunger strikes to protest treatment of farmworkers were legendary and threatened his health. In 1968 he fasted for 25 days, in 1972 again for 25 days and in 1988, to protest the impact of pesticides on farmworkers, he fasted for 36 days.